# ALIGNS: Unlocking nomological networks in psychological measurement through a large language model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09723 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09723/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [The Linear Representation Hypothesis and the Geometry of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03658/) (2023)
- [The Platonic Representation Hypothesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07987/) (2024)
- [Scaling Sentence Embeddings with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16645/) (2023)
- [GISTEmbed: Guided In-sample Selection of Training Negatives for Text Embedding Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16829/) (2024)
- [Validity in Design Science](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09466/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Psychological measurement is critical to many disciplines. Despite advances in measurement, building nomological networks, theoretical maps of how concepts and measures relate to establish validity, remains a challenge 70 years after Cronbach and Meehl proposed them as fundamental to validation. This limitation has practical consequences: clinical trials may fail to detect treatment effects, and public policy may target the wrong outcomes. We introduce Analysis of Latent Indicators to Generate Nomological Structures (ALIGNS), a large language model-based system trained with validated questionnaire measures. ALIGNS provides three comprehensive nomological networks containing over 550,000 indicators across psychology, medicine, social policy, and other fields. This represents the first application of large language models to solve a foundational problem in measurement validation. We report classification accuracy tests used to develop the model, as well as three evaluations. In the first evaluation, the widely used NIH PROMIS anxiety and depression instruments are shown to converge into a single dimension of emotional distress. The second evaluation examines child temperament measures and identifies four potential dimensions not captured by current frameworks, and questions one existing dimension. The third evaluation, an applicability check, engages expert psychometricians who assess the system's importance, accessibility, and suitability. ALIGNS is freely available at nomologicalnetwork.org, complementing traditional validation methods with large-scale nomological analysis.